Design a stylish Scandinavian room
Shayan Shamlou provides his expert advice on creating a modern Scandinavian-inspired apartment with relaxing, ambient lighting
Create an attractive apartment with a guide by Shayan Shamlou
Ihave always been very interested in Scandinavian style, because it creates a very relaxing atmosphere due to the use of natural, ambient light. That’s why I decided to create a small apartment in this style, one that includes a bedroom and a dining room.
Before we start, we should always consider the main goal of our project; given that this space is supposed to show the Scandinavian style, I need to depict a lot of ambient light through the glass doors and large windows of the house. I tried to use a harmonious combination of neutral and warm colours in this project. Colours such as white, grey, cream and light brown, as well as black, can always be used in this style, according to the artist’s taste.
Always use wood material for the dining table and also choose fabrics with a very simple texture, with minimal, neutral and bright colours often the best choice for this type of project.
It should also be noted that in this style, house plants and flowers are usually included, often with large green leaves, which can evoke an interesting atmosphere with the contrast that they create in the colour combination of the house/apartment.
Details may not appear to be very important in minimalist-style projects, but this is certainly not the case. The details of a room can play a significant part in enhancing the beauty and naturalness of the scene.
Let’s take a step-by-step look at how I created this piece.
01 UNIT SETUP AND MODELLING
This scene is a small apartment made of dining room space and a bedroom. It’s a simple rectangular apartment with an entrance door, with large windows that direct a lot of light into the room. Also, inside the house is a corridor with an arched entrance.
The Sweep Profile script is used to add details as shown in the screenshot. Wall details have been added in both the ceiling and floor sections. Two rectangular sections are drawn as columns to add ceiling details along the roof. Classic and minimal furniture designed by Hans Wegner, called the CH24 model (or ‘Wishbone chair’), helps evoke a real, believable atmosphere for our image.
02 REDEFORM PLUGIN FOR OBJECTS
There are many useful 3ds Max plugins available for increasing speed and efficiency, one of which is the Redeform plugin – as its name implies, we will use it to deform objects. Transforming this action with conventional tools eliminates UVS and disrupts the overall shape of the object. The Redeform plugin performs operations for us very quickly with both Scale and Deform options, without breaking the UV object. This plugin can easily perform Deform operations in the direction of x, y and z. In this scene, I turned a six-person table object into a fourperson table very easily and quickly by controlling the control point without changing the UV.
Scandinavianstyle projects
03 PREPARE SCENE FOR LIGHTING
I tried to use sunlight to direct light in through the window. If we want to create a believable scene, we must be able to create natural shadows. I aimed to direct the light to the table by placing the angled sun so that the shadow of the
window was on the floor. I also used an HDRI for ambient light. In the Scandinavian style, we need to have a white and bright light in the room. We also need to use an HDRI that is clear from the window, which is only as a background, and increase the amount of Expo to create an overexposure effect in the exterior.
04 CAMERA CONTROL SETTINGS
Due to the small space of the dining room, I had to use a Focal Length of 33 to be able to take up more space in the room. But the problem is not solved by simply changing the focal number, and I had to use the very practical Camera Clipping option and utilise the camera.
Place it at a distance from the main wall outside the house, and adjust the space of the room as desired by placing the cutting line in the area of the inner wall.
05 WALL AND WOOD MATERIALS
The most important materials are wall materials, wood table materials, and dining chairs.
I used wood material because I wanted it to have a lot of light reflection; I changed the Fresnel IOR to 2.5 and used a map for reflection and Glossy 0.8 to get the desired material.
As for the wall – with a lot of reflection that reflects white light well, and placing the Glossy and Bump map, I reached the main material. This material is the most important in this project.
Details are also a key element, so I used a Dirt Map for wall Sweeps to show the dirty colour difference in the corners of the wall.
06 POP-ART STYLE PAINTING
I am very interested in using artists in my projects who work in the field of modern-style paintings. And this time, I have used one of the works of Mahsa, who is a very capable painter in this field.
This work is in the style of pop art and has been prepared exclusively for this project by the artist. Including the real works of creators can help 3D archviz artists when creating realistic scenes.
The best way to use a piece of art like this is as a painting in the bedroom, which can add attractive colour balance to the scene. First I entered Photoshop after photographing the painting and applied a colour effect, sharpness with high contrast, and colour saturation. Then by making a simple Corona Material and attributing this image to the diffuser, the work is almost ready. I also modelled a frame for the artwork.
07 PREPARE FOR RENDERING SETUP
I used the latest version of Corona Renderer, version 6. For all seven
scenes, I used the same rendering settings to avoid changes in lighting and image resolution. I set a value of 3.5 for the Noise level limit, so that the scene had no noise, as well as a value of 0.9 for the Denoise operation after the rendering process. Of course, note that the rendering time will increase with these tweaks.
The post-production section of Corona Renderer is a complete studio where I achieved my desired post-pro results after tweaking the LUT and tone mapping settings. I also used values of 16 and 2.0 respectively to calculate the GI and light cache parameters.
08 POST-PRODUCTION
Photoshop performs 16bit post-production operations well. After combining six render elements, I use the Adobe Camera Raw Filter plugin.
I aimed to increase the window light inside and brighten the interior with the Exposure operation. Adding some contrast gives the room a nice appeal, but it should be noted that in Scandinavian-style scenes, the contrast should not be increased too much.
Finally, I used the powerful Bbtools Glow & Glare plugin to amplify the amount of light glow in the window section.•